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The Museums Portal

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile

A museum (/mjuːˈziːəm/ mew-ZEE-əm) is an institution dedicated to displaying and/or preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private collections that are used by researchers and specialists. Compared to a library, a museum hosts a much wider range of objects and usually focus around a specific theme such as the arts, science, natural history, local history, and other topics. Public museums that host exhibitions and interactive demonstrations are often considered to be tourist attractions, and many museums attract large numbers of visitors from outside their host country, with the most visited museums in the world regularly attracting millions of visitors annually.

Since the establishment of the earliest known museum in ancient times, museums have been associated with academia and the preservation of rare items. Museums originated as private collections of interesting items, and not until much later did the emphasis on educating the public take root. (Full article...)

Selected museum

Location of the museum in Toronto

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year, making it the most-visited museum in Canada. It is north of Queen's Park, in the University of Toronto district, with its main entrance on Bloor Street West. Museum subway station is named after it and, since a 2008 renovation, is decorated to resemble the ROM's collection at the platform level.

Established on April 16, 1912, and opened on March 19, 1914, the ROM has maintained close relations with the University of Toronto throughout its history, often sharing expertise and resources. It was under direct control and management of the University of Toronto until 1968, when it became an independent Crown agency of the Government of Ontario. It is Canada's largest field-research institution, with research and conservation activities worldwide.

With more than 13 million items and 40 galleries, the museum's diverse collections of world culture and natural history contribute to its international reputation. It contains a collection of dinosaurs, minerals and meteorites; Canadian and European historical artifacts; as well as African, Near Eastern, and East Asian art. It houses the world's largest collection of fossils from the Burgess Shale in British Columbia with more than 150,000 specimens. The museum also contains an extensive collection of design and fine art, including clothing, interior, and product design, especially Art Deco. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

Image 1The Egyptian Museum, Cairo, showing some of its collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities
Image 2The Tower of Faces at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
Image 3A museum in Verkhniye Mandrogi, Leningrad Oblast, specialising in vodka
Image 4The South Hall of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Virginia, an aerospace museum, showing the Enola Gay bomber and other aeroplanes
Image 5Triangular prism-shaped display cases in the Red Dot Design Museum, Essen
Image 6The Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, has the world's largest stained-glass ceiling, designed by Leonard French.
Image 7The Industrial Gallery, housed in the original part of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, designed by Yeoville Thomason and opened in 1885
Image 8Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale
Image 9Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, an archaeology and anthropology museum
Image 10Storage gallery of the Larco Museum, Lima, Peru, a museum of pre-Columbian art
Image 11Old Dutch display case in Branderszaal Lange Haven 97, Schiedam
Image 12The queen's chamber of the Petit Trianon, Versailles, the former residence of Marie Antoinette
Image 13Exhibit in Indonesia Museum, Jakarta, displaying the traditional costumes of Indonesian ethnic groups
Image 14Antique cuckoo clocks displayed at Cuckooland Museum, Tabley, an example of a specialised museum
Image 15Panoramic view of the library of the Guimet Museum, Paris, an art museum specialising in Asian art
Image 16Floating Heads by Sophie Cave (2006), installed in the East Court of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
Image 17Display cases in Altena Castle
Image 18The Galerie des Glaces of the Palace of Versailles
Image 19An early 18th-century German Schrank with a traditional display of corals, from the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin
Image 20Iron bed in torture room at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh
Image 21Entrance hall of the Vienna Technical Museum, one of the largest technology museums in Europe
Image 22The Dinosaur Hall of the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin, showing the skeleton of Giraffatitan brancai, among the largest mounted skeletons in the world

Selected general article

Museum education is a specialized field devoted to developing and strengthening the education role of informal education spaces and institutions such as museums.

In a critical report called Excellence and Equity published in 1992 by the American Association of Museums, the educational role of museums was identified as the core to museums' service to the public. As museum education has developed as a field of study and interest in its own right, efforts have been made to record its history and to establish a research agenda to strengthen its position as a discipline in the wider work of museums. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that visitors to the Museum of Sexual Cultures can make offerings to a statue of Priapus?
... that the FBI set up temporary offices in a museum on an aircraft carrier while investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks?
... that the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia is the only contemporary art museum in the country with a permanent collection?
... that The Citi Exhibition: Manga at the British Museum was the largest exhibition of manga ever held outside Japan?
... that New York City's Bartow–Pell Mansion became a museum after its operator was restricted from importing and exporting plants?
... that Daniel Sickles's leg is a popular museum display?

Get involved

For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Museums-related articles, see WikiProject Museums.

Selected exterior image

Image 1The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 2Aerial view of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel's Holocaust memorial; the museum, designed by Moshe Safdie, opened in 2005 and tells the personal stories of ninety Holocaust victims and survivors
Image 3The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 4Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 5Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 6The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
Image 7The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 8Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 9The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 10The British Museum, London
Image 11The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 12Small cloister of the charterhouse of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, built on the site of the Baths of Diocletian; part of the National Roman Museum of Rome
Image 13The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 14The Dalí Theatre and Museum, commemorating Salvador Dalí in his home town of Figueres, Catalonia, has a geodesic dome and is decorated with giant eggs.
Image 15The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 16National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 17The Lower Castle of Ambras Castle, Innsbruck, one of the earliest buildings constructed specifically for use as a museum; it remains a museum displaying its original collections
Image 18Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 19São Paulo Museum of Art, São Paulo, a 1968 concrete-and-glass structure designed by Lina Bo Bardi, considered a landmark of the city and a major example of modern Brazilian architecture
Image 20The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 21The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 22The Louvre, Paris, showing the glass-and-metal Pyramid, designed by I. M. Pei to act as the museum's main entrance, and completed in 1989
Image 23A maritime museum located in the village of Bolungarvík, Vestfirðir, Iceland, showing a 19th-century fishing base with a typical boat of the period and associated industrial buildings: an example of a very small museum
Image 24Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 25Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 26Paifang or arched entrance of the Northern Branch of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, whose collection covers 8,000 years of the history of Chinese art
Image 27The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 28The Museum Island, Berlin

Selected type of museum

An agricultural museum is a museum dedicated to preserving agricultural history and heritage. It aims to educate the public on the subject of agricultural history, their legacy and impact on society. To accomplish this, it specializes in the display and interpretation of artifacts related to agriculture, often of a specific time period or in a specific region. They may also display memorabilia related to farmers or businesspeople who impacted society via agriculture (for example, size of the land cultivated as compared to other farmers) or agricultural advances (for example, technology implementation).

An agricultural museum is said to be diachronic if it presents the entire narrative associated with subject of agriculture within its walls, or to be synchronic if it limits its displays to a single experience. (Full article...)